James Nesbitt has revealed the hair raising secret behind his Ballon d’Or appearance.

The Broughshane native sent social media into overdrive during football’s most prestigious awards night, where Lionel Messi won the world’s best player award, when he appeared to be sporting a much fuller head of hair while carrying out his duties as presenter.

Now Jimmy, who’s previously confessed to a hair transplant, has admitted what we suspected all along — it was a toupee.

Appearing on RTE’s The Late Late Show, Jimmy, 51, told host Ryan Turbidy that football body FIFA asked him to wear the jet black rug after he’d had his head shaved to play killer Coleraine dentist Colin Howell in upcoming TV mini series The Secret.

“I have been very vocal in the past about the hair restoration work I’ve had done,” he said.

“The last job I had, I was playing Colin Howell and to age for this they had to shave my hair right down to the scalp.

“So FIFA I think thought, ‘Jeez you can’t look like that’, so we had a piece made and then I got out there and it did look like my hair had grown very quickly.

“But it flew off very quickly and I’m back to my own hair now,” he added.